We worry about the "fairness" of drone warfare, but soon it will be the humans who will make more mistakes in targeting

A top secret unmanned drone, said to be the most advanced aircraft ever built in Britain, has carried out its first successful test flights.

It looks like something out of a science fiction movie. But it is also a window into the future of warfare.

Some will view it as an amazing piece of engineering. But not everyone will like what they see.

Taranis -- named after the Celtic god of thunder -- was first unveiled BAE Systems in 2010.

It was a glitzy ceremony in an aircraft hangar, with moody music and flashing lights. Rather odd given that it is supposed to be a "classified" or top secret programme, partly funded by the Ministry of Defence.

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Drones, or as the USAF prefers to call them this week, "Remotely Piloted Aircraft," are all the rage of late. It is pretty easy to see why. They are accurate, they cost less, they have the potential to be much more maneuverable,* they can be designed to be much "stealthier" than a piloted aircraft, and they do not put any of your own people at risk. But there are a few things that put people off about them, although it might not if people knew more about the technology.

For starters there is a generalized sentiment that it is somehow "unfair" to use an aircraft which is controlled from thousands of miles away to wage war on people on the ground. OK, that is just silly. War is not about being fair. It really never was, despite some messed up Victorian-era ideas about gentlemanly conduct. War is, in the end, about killing more of the other guys than you lose yourself, and anybody who claims otherwise is not talking about war. They may mean "conflict" (which is not always the same as war), but if you are talking about war then you are talking about killing and "fair" is just a silly idea.

Then there is a sort of vague fear about allowing robots autonomy, as though Skynet was suddenly going to come to life. Tied in with that is also the idea that there should always be a "human in the loop," because allowing a drone to operate autonomously would somehow be unethical. Both the USAF and the Royal Air Force are constantly reminding people that their aircraft always have a real live pilot in control and making the ultimate decision. But let me pose a hypothetical question which is one that ethicists really need to grapple with soon.

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The artificial intelligence of some robotic systems is now becoming so refined that, in fact, it is the humans who tend to make more mistakes in targeting. So what happens when, in the near future, it is demonstrated that an AI system will only, on average, make a targeting mistake 1 time in 500, whereas humans make mistakes in targeting about 10% of the time. When that is the situation (and that day is not far off) is it not then un-ethical to keep a human in the loop since the pain and suffering of humans is actually increased when you have humans in process versus just allowing the AI to operate by itself?

As for why the Brits have revealed that their newest drone has passed flight tests I can only speculate. Like any other weapon, if it is to have any sort of deterrent effect then it needs to be known, and even publicized. Demonstrating a capability is sometimes the best one can do when you know that you do not actually have much capability at all.**

* Without the squishy wet bag inside the aircraft a drone can potentially pull off maneuvers that would kill a human pilot. Modern fighter jets already exceed the capability of the pilots who sit in them.

** In the wake of WWII the United States effectively had no nuclear weapons. Indeed, for the first several years of the Cold War the U.S. operated mostly on bluff in regard to that capability.

This essay is the opinion of the author and does not represent the position of the DoD, the Army, or any unit with which he is affiliated. I can be reached at R_Bateman_LTC@hotmail.com

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